Preparing for my first crop

I was excited at the thought of attending my first crop. I dont really have any specific reason why I never did one before, I've seen them enough to know what they are about. I think I was intimidated by the thought of having to pre-plan so much because my style is very spontaneous, and I was probably right in that. I signed up months ago for the Embellish It sponsored Play All Day. I am a fan of Basic Grey papers and have taken Embellish It classes at CKC before.

I waited until a week before to finally look up some pointers on going to a crop and what to take. Upon my first few articles and blog entries, I started to panic at the notion that some scrapbookers plan for a crop for weeks! I was down to a few days. I knew what photos I had to scrap, so I got them out and at the advice of what I read, started putting them into page protectors. I divided out which photos I wanted to a have a full, traditional layout with and others that would be put into divided page protectors. I like this sort of hybrid style of scrapbooking and photo keeping. It takes the pressure off of creating a magnifcent layout everytime and also keeps from getting "too behind". When I completed that task I felt much more confident in being prepared.

Next step was what supplies do I bring? Tools is pretty easy as I have packed for classes before, but trying to pick through all the paper and embellishments proved more challenging. I had been primarily digi scrapping for a year, so I sort of forgot how much physical supplies one has to go through to get the best combination for a given layout. And being a scrapper for 10+ years, I certainly have a buttload of paper & embellies. I tried to at least get more specific for the one page layouts and then find paper pads that would be versatile for the divided page protectors.

I also forgot about titles! Back in the day it was all stickers, then when I got a Cricut, it was all die-cuts. Now I like to have a balance, I don't always go for massive, one-thought titles, but I needed to have some sort of plan to make sure I had the right letters. I got out the trusty Gypsy, and after getting re-acquainted with its functions I whipped up some titles i would proceed to print out in black, white or brown. I figured I could customize colors in other ways.

Now that most of my ideas are ready to go, I have to physically pack it up! Lets see how this goes...